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Gladys Aylward: How a Rejected Missionary Ended Footbinding and Carried a Hundred Orphans to Safety
Paperback
Historical FiguresReligious BiographiesChinese History
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 18 2026
Pages: 108
Weight: 0.59
Height: 0.22 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.00
Language: English
In 1930, a London parlor maid with no formal education, no missionary training, and a total of ninety pounds saved through years of scrubbing floors and waiting tables made a decision that would carry her across two continents, into a warzone, and eventually into the pages of history.
Gladys Aylward had been told, plainly and more than once, that she was not qualified for missionary service. The China Inland Mission rejected her outright. She could not learn Chinese in a classroom. She had no medical training, no theological degree, and no institutional backing of any kind. What she had instead was a promise she had made to God as a young woman, and a stubborn refusal to let that promise go unanswered.
At the center of the book is the event for which Gladys Aylward is best remembered: her trek across the mountains of war-torn China with nearly a hundred children in her care, the only adult responsible for their survival, facing hunger, enemy soldiers, and a river crossing that seemed impossible until help arrived from an unexpected direction. Readers will also follow her into the years that followed, her uneasy brush with international fame, and her later work establishing children's homes in Hong Kong and Taiwan that continued for the rest of her life.
This is a book for readers who are drawn to true stories of ordinary people who did not wait to feel qualified before answering a call larger than themselves. It offers a clear, chronological account of one of the twentieth century's more remarkable missionary journeys, grounded firmly in the documented record of Gladys Aylward's own words and the recollections of those who knew her. Readers interested in missionary history, wartime rescue stories, or the history of modern China will find here both the drama of her most famous journey and the quieter, sustained years of service that gave that journey its meaning.
Gladys Aylward never considered herself extraordinary. This book invites you to decide that for yourself
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